Abstract
The BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) solar array has been designed to guarantee the operational requirements in a very severe environment, mainly characterized by high temperatures and high light intensity. Furthermore, the qualification of the MPO solar array requires ca. 5500 thermal cycles.The final configuration of the solar array is the result of a very complex system analysis aiming at reducing the solar array operative temperatures. The outcome of this was an extensive development and test effort on components which provide sufficiently high temperature resistance and a wing with unique design characteristics.The MPO solar generator is composed of one wing consisting of three panels and provides an average power output up to 1800W during the nominal 1 Earth year mission around Mercury. The wing design is characterised by temperature reduction measures. The flight wing has already passed the majority of the environmental test program.
Highlights
The BepiColombo mission to planet Mercury is a joint project between the European Space agency (ESA) and JAXA of Japan
ESA is responsible for the complete Mercury Composite Spacecraft (MCS) system and Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) plus MOSIF which acts as a sun shield and an interface to the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO)
It is common practice that the thermal vacuum (TV) testing is done on panel level
Summary
The BepiColombo mission to planet Mercury is a joint project between the European Space agency (ESA) and JAXA of Japan. As a consequence of the vicinity of planet Mercury to the Sun, the two satellites and the MTM are exposed to extreme light intensities up to 11 solar constants which corresponds to 15.4kW/m2 This leads to severe operational conditions of the solar arrays. The MPO solar array is exposed to infrared radiation (between 13.6kW/m2 at perihelion and at the subsolar point and 6W/m2 at the night side) and the reflection of sun light (albedo 12% in average but varies considerably) from Mercury’s surface Those boundary conditions result in very high solar array temperatures. The MPO spacecraft (SC) design and the orbits lead to the fact that during the science mission the Sun light, the Mercury infrared heat and it’s albedo hit the MPO solar array from many different directions.
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